An evocative prose poem by Kajal – exclusively for Different Truths.

I have always wished as a child that while flensing, I find some money dropped on roads, often greedily imagining that what if the droppings are scattered like the hail after a hailstorm in Delhi. Beautiful and white. At the same time muddy, brown and dirty. Our
kitchen got flooded with sewage water, and then my father would pick a wooden leftover door from the nearest garbage pile and would bridge the entrance to the common bedroom of our matchbox-like jhuggi. Bonus, sometimes this bridge would float. My mother would make lunch and dinner in the kitchen sea like a Viking on her kitchen ship while the residual rainwater would drop all over her from the sails above. She diligently would row this ship, trying to save her precious spices from her salted tears and cooked compassionately for her family. She made my favourite aloo ki sabzi that day and afterwards came to pick me up from school with an umbrella. I came out of my fancy private school in a fancy skirt and fancy shirt, fancily. I was surprised to see her while my male confidant swiftly slithered away on the first faint sight of my mother. I was happy that day and saw many ice cream carts pass by; my mother said, “Don’t you look! I don’t want another flood of phlegm in our house”. She giggled. I did too. I entered my home and encountered the bridge. She served the rice and aloo ki sabzi but it tasted different from usual.

The scent of Flâneuse snailed into my aaloo ki sabji and
I couldn't eat. I loved my ma's effort, felt sorry for her, pity indeed.
I couldn't eat. It wasn't tasty. The food in my mouth
Turned muddy and I wanted to go back.
Flâneuse.
Buy that ice cream I wanted.
Only if
I could find five rupees
dropped somewhere on the road.

All my life
I searched for those
5 rupees
on the
Road.

I
still
Do.
Rs. 5.
₹5.

Picture design Anumita Roy

Kajal Jha

Kajal Jha is a Delhi-based poet, writer and research scholar from IGNOU. She received a gold medal for securing the highest marks in M.A. English at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, felicitated by the then Vice President of India, Sh. Venkaiah Naidu, in 2019. Her recent works include a poem, Sanitizer in Indian Literature (#325), a few poems in Teesta Review Journal, and many online and paperback poetry anthologies.